Mom Dog Sees Rescuers — And Immediately Leads Them To Sick Puppies

The day Christina Beckles found Reece and her puppies, she was actually looking for another dog — a stray she’d seen wandering around a beach in Puerto Rico.

“We’d gone in search of another dog who was in pretty deplorable condition, and we’d been trying to get her for a few days,” Beckles, president and founder of The Sato Project, an organization that helps street dogs in Puerto Rico, told The Dodo. “We went down to the beach, but couldn’t find her.”

“She allowed me to put a leash on her and I said, ‘Come on, you’ve got to show me where your puppies are,’” Beckles said. “And we walked about about half the length of a football field, to an area behind a chain link fence.”

When Reece stopped in front of a shipping container, Beckles smelled something awful.

“I was like, ‘Oh, this does not smell good,’” Beckles said. “It smelled like maybe they died.”

A man in a nearby house came out to see them, and he explained to Beckles that Reece had puppies under the container, which was slightly raised from the ground. The problem was, how was Beckles going to get them out?

She dropped to the ground to peer beneath the shipping container — and found what she was looking for.

But Reece and her 2-week-old puppies were all really sick, so the next thing Beckles did was rush them to the vet. The puppies turned out to be dangerously anemic, and Reece was malnourished and dehydrated, and had a low plasma count, according to Beckles.

“Reece is a really, really great dog,” Beckles said. “The pups are also doing well. We hope that in the next couple of days, their teeth will start coming through, and they’ll be able to start eating really nice, wet mushy food.”

But not all dogs get such a happy ending. In Puerto Rico, hundreds of thousands of street dogs need help, but there are only about five dog shelters in the entire country, according to Beckles. And if dogs do end up in shelters, it’s more than likely that they’ll be euthanized.

The Sato Project is one of the only organizations helping street dogs in Puerto Rico, and they’ve managed to save about 1,500 dogs in the last 5 years, according to Beckles.